Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

‘Screw you.’ SYLVESTER’s robot voice turns into a metal whisper. ‘I’m really sorry about … well,’ his eyes drift down, towards her bandaged feet, ‘everything. You know?’ He shrugs and his white paper suit rustles.

She doesn’t say anything, just sits quietly as the door opens and the monster with the ‘PATRICK’ sticker comes in, the big camera slung over her shoulder. Jenny can hear Mummy crying in the other room, and then PATRICK closes the door, shutting it out. ‘He’s not answering his phone.’

SYLVESTER’s still stroking Jenny’s hair. ‘You try email?’

‘Of course I tried bloody email.’ PATRICK stops and stares. ‘What are you doing?’

TOM looks over the top of his newspaper. ‘Kiddie-fiddling.’

‘I’m not a bloody paedo!’ SYLVESTER stands. ‘You try to be nice, show a wee kid some compassion, and-’

‘I know what you want to show her. You want to show her your-’

‘Enough!’ PATRICK stomps her foot. ‘Shut up, the pair of you!’

TOM shrugs. ‘What if the cops picked him up? I mean, they were all over the place today-’

‘They speak to you too?’

‘Was out. Did my flatmates though; asking all kinds of stuff about Alison and Jenny.’

PATRICK waves a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘But what if-’

‘As long as you keep your mouths shut , they can’t prove anything. They’ve got nothing: no witnesses, no motive, no DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. If we torch this place before we go Sherlock Holmes couldn’t catch us.’

‘Yeah, but suppose-’

‘Are you retarded?’ She walks over to the bed, picks up Teddy Gordon and turns him upside down so his horrible fuzzy bottom is sticking in the air, the white washing tag poking out like a worm. ‘We’re talking about over eight million pounds, Sylvester.’

‘Yeah, no: it’ll be fine, I’m working on it. No one’ll see a thing.’

‘Make sure they don’t.’ PATRICK shoves the teddy bear at Jenny, those dead black eyes glittering at her. ‘After all, you don’t want to end up like Colin, do you?’

SYLVESTER doesn’t say anything, he just stands there staring at PATRICK. Even TOM is silent.

‘He’s in there laughing at us!’ Superintendent Green thumped his fist against the boardroom table’s polished mahogany surface. ‘I told you we should have followed him — he would’ve led us straight to Alison and Jenny McGregor. Bringing him in like this was wilfully reckless.’

Logan checked his watch. Two minutes into the catch-up session and Green was already throwing blame around.

Steel narrowed her eyes. ‘At least we’re doing something. You’d still be sitting in here with your thumb up your-’

‘Inspector!’ Finnie slumped back in his seat. ‘We appreciate your passion, but now’s not the time. Perhaps we could focus on finding solutions instead of pointing fingers?’

‘Well,’ Acting DI Mark MacDonald fidgeted with his pen, ‘what if we let Clayton go? Pretend it was just a mistake, and we’re dropping all the charges? Then we could keep him under surveillance and he would think he was in the clear? You know, best of both worlds?’

Finnie stared at him until Mark’s ears went bright pink. ‘Don’t be stupid. What do the IB say?’

Logan checked the file he’d grabbed on the way to the boardroom. ‘They’re still going through his laptop — Clayton’s got about two gig of encrypted files that could be anything. Unless he gives us the key, it’s going to take months, maybe years.’

‘That’s not an option. Door-to-doors?’

Steel had a dig at her bra. ‘Ongoing. Halls of residence are huge; has to be hundreds of students living at Hillhead.’

‘I see…’ Finnie buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then surfaced again. ‘Options?’

‘We’re no’ letting Clayton go — the media would skin us alive.’

‘Superintendent Green?’

The man from SOCA crossed his arms. ‘I think I’ve said my piece.’

Finnie turned back to Logan. ‘What about the psychologist, Goulding?’

‘He wants some off-the-record time with Clayton. Thinks it might help to build a rapport and-’

Green’s chin came up. ‘It’s out of the question. You can’t leave a civilian alone with the only suspect you’ve managed to produce: nothing Clayton says will be admissible. I won’t allow you to compromise the whole investigation. The Independent Police Complaints Commission-’

‘Blah, blah, blah.’ Steel gave her left boob an extra hard jiggle. ‘You know what, Superintendent? You’re about as welcome round here as a blow job off your own granddad.’

His eyes went wide. ‘How dare -’

‘All right, all right.’ Finnie rubbed at his face. ‘Just for a moment, could we all pretend that we’re on the same side?’

Green made a big show of taking a deep breath, then aligning the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. ‘You need to find Frank Baker. You need to come up with a strategy for recovering Alison and Jenny. You need to come up with a strategy for following the money when it’s handed over. You need to sort this out now. Not tomorrow, not next week: now .’

Steel let go of her bra. ‘I say we give Goulding fifteen minutes with Clayton. Not like we’ve got anything to lose, is it?’

Finnie nodded. ‘Agreed. Do it in an interview room, with the cameras running. And make sure Clayton knows he’s being filmed so his defence can’t moan about it afterwards. Any objections, Superintendent?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Good. McRae, set it up. Acting DI MacDonald: I want that risk assessment on my desk by three. Steel: find out where we are with Frank Baker. I’ll see what we can do about tracking the ransom payment.’

Dr Dave Goulding sat in Finnie’s office, a mug of tea in one hand, a Jaffa Cake in the other. ‘I’d say it’s … possibly not as clean-cut as that.’

The head of CID closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘This might come as a bit of a shock, but I just want to know “yes” or “no”.’

Logan rested his back against the bank of filing cabinets, the metal cool through the white cotton of his shirt. Steel stifled a yawn.

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ Goulding turned his Jaffa Cake into a crescent moon. ‘Stephen Clayton feels comfortable playing with us because he’s not worried about slipping up. That means he’s either incredibly arrogant, or he had nothing to do with Alison and Jenny’s abduction.’ The rest of the Jaffa Cake disappeared. ‘I just don’t think he’s the right personality type. Oh, he’s bright enough, but he couldn’t keep it secret. He’d want to shout it from the top of Marischal College: “Look at me! Look how clever I am!”’

Finnie pursed his rubbery lips. ‘He’s defi nitely not involved?’

‘It’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely.’

‘Then we’re back to square one. And we’ve wasted a whole morning, and hundreds of man-hours on a bloody student .’ Finnie massaged his nose again. ‘Inspector McRae, can you tell that I’m slightly disappointed?’

‘He was a Doctor Who fan, he had history with Alison McGregor-’

‘That doesn’t matter if he didn’t have anything to do with their abduction!’

No, it didn’t.

Steel puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, look on the bright side, at least Green’s got something new to whinge about.’

‘…join us next week for more Britain’s Next Big Star !’ Canned applause filtered through the house, echoing up the stairwell from the television in the lounge.